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Members of the audience hold up signs that read "Fire Him" as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, center, testifies before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on budget on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 16, 2018. Pruitt faced tough questioning Wednesday from senators about ethics investigations involving his travel spending, security precautions and large raises for young aides.(Photo: ANDREW HARNIK/AP)

WASHINGTON — The latest chapter of Scott Pruitt's ambitious remake of the Environmental Protection Agency took place Thursday in a windowless conference room of the sprawling Washington Plaza hotel.

There, more than 30 members of the EPA's influential Science Advisory Board gathered to discuss such topics as air pollution standards, auto emission rules, and a controversial plan the EPA administrator is proposing that would limit the science that's been used to underpin an array of environmental regulations.

The five-hour discussion often gravitated toward technical and arcane items. But the makeup of the panel sent an unmistakably clear message: industry and state officials are going to have a larger say in shaping environmental and public health policies under the Trump administration.

Thursday's meeting (which carried over into Friday) was the first since Pruitt revamped the panel's membership last fall in a move he said was meant to inject a diversity of opinions into the regulatory process.

The change was quickly denounced by environmental activists who see the move as part of the administration's aggressive deregulatory agenda to gut public health protections and help its petroleum, manufacturing and chemical allies.

Created by Congress in 1978, the 44-member advisory board of outside experts who serve three-year terms is among the most important of 22 EPA panels who review the science behind EPA proposed rules and weigh in. The administrator doesn't have to follow their recommendations but they are publicly released.

Pruitt sued the EPA under President Obama more than a dozen times when he was Oklahoma's attorney general to stop environmental regulations.

One of Pruitt's first moves after becoming EPA administrator last year was to revamp membership on the boards because he thought they didn't fairly represent the United States geographically or the industries that would have to abide by the regulations.

"The challenges for air and water quality are very diverse across the country: Utah is the second driest state in the country; Minnesota's a little bit different with respect to the needs they have," Pruitt said last fall. "So it's very important to have a contingent of scientists and individuals that represent the needs that we have across the country."

EPA's Science Advisory Board met Thursday, the first time since Administrator Scott Pruitt revamped the panel last year.(Photo: Ledyard King (USA TODAY))

Asked if he thought the reconstituted panel was a better reflection of the varied perspectives Pruitt was trying to imbue into the agency culture, Honeycutt demurred.

"There are lot of different viewpoints from scientists," he told reporters during a break. "If you have a four ounces in an eight-ounce glass, is the glass half empty or half full? Our job is to tell you here's four ounces of liquid in that 8-ounce glass and let someone else determine if it's (affecting) your health. We're here to give advice to the administrator and, as you can see, I think we're working hard to do that."

Researchers from academic institutions still comprise a majority of the advisory board but more lineup changes are expected as the terms of existing members from the Obama era expire.

The turnover has been accelerated by a new requirement that none of those sitting on the agency's 22 advisory committees are allowed to receive EPA grant money. Pruitt said doing so was a conflict that violated the scientific integrity of the agency's work.

Environmental and public health advocates who addressed the panel about objections to various regulations proposed by the EPA did not mention the board's new makeup among their list of grievances.

David Cooke, a senior analyst with the left-leaning Union of Concerned Scientists, took issue with a proposed rule that could ease truck emission standards. But he also spoke of a larger dissatisfaction with the current administration's approach to regulation.

"Many of the shortcomings in these rules apply across a number of the administration’s recent actions, including an over-reliance on industry comments and ignoring large amounts of publicly funded data and analysis from the EPA itself," Cooke told the board.

The rule "appears to have been developed without a public process for soliciting input from the scientific community," according to an advisory board memo, which also notes that it "does not include any assessment of the impact of data restrictions on existing or future regulatory programs."

The Natural Resources Defense Council, which has been staunchly anti-Pruitt, applauded the advisory panel's decision.

“The advisory panel is right to seek to review the anemic reasons for adopting this plan," said Ana Unruh Cohen, NRDC's managing director of government affairs. "The leadership of the board was chosen by Pruitt himself, so their decision today is a sharp rebuke of his leadership and this dangerous proposal.”